Leader Lookback: Cisco award, airlift
This is what was in The Evening Leader 50 years ago this week.
GALEN CISCO AWARD PRESENTED JEFF GINTER AS OUTSTANDING LL PLAYER FOR 1970
Highlighting the program at the Wednesday noon meeting of Rotary, was the presentation of the Galen Cisco award to Jeff Ginter, who was selected by all the players in the Little League program as the outstanding player for the 1970 season.
Making the award was Galen Cisco, now a pitching coach with the Kansas City Royals, who just returned to St. Marys from a Florida training session.
Jeff tallied a batting average of .500 this past
season while serving as a catcher for the Reds team, under coach Barney Fishbaugh.
At the conclusion of each season, all boys in the Little League program are given an opportunity to vote for the outstanding player. The award, sponsored by the Rotary Club, is then presented at a club meeting by St. Marys big league baseball player Cisco.
The Galen Cisco Award was started some years ago when a Galen Cisco Day was held at the Cincinnati Reds park while Cisco was a pitcher with the New York Mets. Twelve-year-old Ginter is a seventh-grade pupil
at McBroom School,
In congratulating the recipient, Jeff, for his coveted award, Galen gave a few words of inspiration to the young catcher, stating that, ‘you are only as good as you want to be and can only improve your talent by hard dedicated work.’ There is no easy road to the big league, the speaker testified. Mr. Cisco is changing positions in the baseball picture, going from the mound to a position of pitching coach for the Kansas City Royals. Last year, he worked in that capacity partially but when his services as a pitcher were needed in midseason, he returned to the mound for the remainder of the year.
STEVE STURGEON AIDS BIG BROTHERS AIRLIFT
Steve Sturgeon, of St. Marys was one of the first officers of the Eastern Air Line Pilots Association to team up for the Big Brothers airlift at Washington, D.C. Three airlifts were staged by the association to take 200 Little Brothers and some 100 Big Brothers who accompanied them for a half-hour ride on a DC-9 over the nation’s capital.
The airlift capped the organization’s annual activities.
Eastern donated the
aircraft, Eastern pilots and flight attendants volunteered their time for the airlift to make it possible for the 200 youths between the ages of 8 and 17 to take the airplane trip — a first for many of the boys taken aloft.
In addition to “big brothers” the Washington chapter of this service group has a membership of some 500 youths. The “Big Brothers” is a voluntary nationwide program in which men spend several hours each week with fatherless boys to give them guidance and companionship.